Every Single Day
by Ginger Glinda the Tangerine
Summary: Maureen and Joanne break up, and Joanne tentatively begins seeing her assistant. Will she and Maureen ever get back together? Slight JoanneOC, MoJo. No longer updating.
1. Time

_A/N: This story is a continuation of the Joanne chapter in _Are You Still Mad_. Aside from the MoJo chapters there, it's my first ever MoJo, so concrit or even just plain ol' encouragement would be great! It's not essential to read _Are You Still _Mad first, but it would deifnitely give you some background... /shamelessplug_

_Disclaimer: If I owned RENT, I'd be playing Mimi, not writing MoJo. Enjoy! :D_

...

Maureen looked at the floor, then back up at Joanne. The lawyer's eyes were filled with unspoken apology, and brimming with unshed tears. Normally this would have been enough to make Maureen kiss her until they were both gasping for breath, but today something was stopping her.

Joanne had come back to _her_. It was possibly the first time this had happened. Maureen had the power, this time, and she was very tempted to use it. More than that, though, seeing Joanne begging for forgiveness made Maureen realise just how many times she'd been in her girlfriend's shoes. She hated being the weak one; it wasn't something she'd ever really had to experience before. With Mark it had certainly never been a problem.

Maureen was a drama queen. She'd been famous in high school for it, and it was now a given among all her friends. Joanne was used to it, and even though she would never admit it, Maureen had a sneaking suspicion that the lawyer didn't hate her antics nearly as much as she made out. And Maureen was used to people making allowances for her, never taking her problems quite seriously enough, which was handy once she calmed down and realised just how overblown her theatrics were. She knew that Joanne expected her to come crawling back every time they fought, and she knew, in the back of her mind, that even as she was making a scene out of the slightest thing that she expected herself to come crawling back too.

But this time Joanne had made the scene, Joanne had made the first move. It had put Maureen on the back foot, and she was hurt and confused. She expected Joanne to be a nice, good, stable girlfriend and support her through everything, not to have sudden mood swings and actually put her work first. She knew it was unreasonable, but after years of dating pushovers, Maureen's habit of needing to be first priority was hard to shake.

So she didn't wrap her arms around Joanne's neck and kiss her. She leaned on the doorframe and folded her arms, staring at the hollow of Joanne's collarbone rather than looking into her face.

"God, Joanne," she muttered. "I… I meant what I said about needing space, okay?"

She turned away, expecting Joanne to leave. Instead, the lawyer reached out and touched Maureen's bare arm, making the diva jump. "Honeybear, listen to me, please."

"I need…" Maureen paused. "I need time to think."

Joanne bit her lip. "Okay."

Maureen looked into Joanne's face. The pain she saw there almost made her reconsider her decision, but for once she stood her ground on a non-political issue and looked away. "I'll call, Pookie."

Joanne's eyes filled with hope as she heard the pet name, and she smiled softly. "Okay."

She walked out of the loft without another word, and Maureen flopped on the couch, the brief exchange having worn her down more than she expected. She let out a loud sigh, and threw a hand over her eyes to block out the light. She heard Mark's whistle from the kitchen as he cooked breakfast, and the smell of cooking bacon pervaded her nostrils.

"Damn," Maureen muttered. "When did Mark get rich?"

Rolling off the couch and onto her knees on the floor, Maureen yawned and tried to clear the memory of Joanne's glassy eyes from her thoughts before walking into the kitchen and leaning on the counter.

"Morning, Marky," she smiled, and Mark looked up, surprised, caught mid-whistle.

"Morning," he greeted her. "Did I hear Joanne in here before?"

Maureen looked at the countertop to avoid Mark's eyes. The surface was dirty, the gross kind of dirty that was usually only seen in advertisements for cleaning fluid. She wrinkled her nose, and wondered how Mimi could stand spending so much time in the loft. It was disgusting, the amount guys could mess up just by living.

"Hello?" Mark laughed, waving a hand in front of Maureen's face. "Where'd you go?"

"Sorry." Maureen shook her head. "What?"

"Joanne," Mark prompted, shaking the cooked bacon out of the frying pan onto a plate.

"Wasn't here," Maureen shrugged. "You must have heard the neighbours, or something."

She thanked fate that she had decided to become an actress, if only so she could hide the workings of her love life from Mark at this particular moment. She felt a little guilty – Mark was almost too trusting, too easy to fool – but waved the feeling away. She'd never felt bad about lying to him while they were dating; why start now?


	2. Thought

Mark's cooked breakfast was delicious – even Roger deigned to leave his bedroom before noon to try some. He and Mimi were in one of their fights again, but Mark whispered conspiratorially to Maureen while the guitarist's back was turned that the disagreement had passed the three-day mark, and so any moment now one of the pair was bound to lose their nerve and go running back the other.

Maureen smiled as she heard this, but couldn't help feeling a sting of resentment. She and Joanne could have done the making-up part already, if it hadn't been for her inexplicable change of heart. Her reasoning had already grown cloudy, and she was already doubting the decision she'd made only minutes ago. Retrospection was not something Maureen was accustomed to, and, quite frankly, the amount of thought she'd given her argument with Joanne worried her. Was she growing up, finally? Was she becoming one of those boring, non-spontaneous people? Were she and Joanne destined to become the couple that everyone else didn't want to be?

Maureen silenced her overactive mind with more bacon-topped pancakes. Roger made a comment about how many she'd eaten, and she flipped him off, a disparaging retort about his manhood sliding off her tongue before she'd either realised she was talking or swallowed. Roger made a face at her, and she poked out her tongue. Mark watched the pair, laughing, then turned to Maureen, who was giggling into her forkful of bacon.

"It's like you never left."

Maureen choked. Both Roger and Mark leapt up to slap her back, and a lump of golden, gooey mess fell onto her plate. She sat up, laughing. "I'm okay! I'm okay."

That was another lie, and she'd barely been awake for an hour. The truth was, Mark's comment had reminded Maureen that she _had_ left, and that she shouldn't be sitting in the loft exchanging juvenile witticisms with Roger and eating pancakes. She should be sitting on Joanne's lap and sharing a cup of coffee (milk and two sugars) while Joanne tried to read the paper and Maureen tried to distract her. Maureen should be with her girlfriend, not her ex-boyfriend.

Furious with herself for thinking too goddamn much, Maureen gathered up the plates and dumped them in the sink, running water over them and staring at them angrily. In her confused mind, she imagined one of them growing a face and talking to her, yelling at her about how much of an idiot she was for letting this animosity between her and Joanne develop. She didn't notice that Mark had followed her into the kitchen and was watching her until she looked up to find a dish brush, so wrapped up was she in her internal dialogue.

Mark just looked at her, a slight smile playing at his lips at the same time as a frown flitted across his brow. "Are you okay, Maureen?"

She shrugged, smiled, dumped her hands into the freezing water that had filled the sink and shrieked, leaping backwards.

"Jesus Christ, Mark!" Maureen yelled, her uncertainty making a rapid transition to anger. "Get some fucking heating!"

The filmmaker took a step back, holding up his hands in defense. "Use the red faucet, Mo."

"Fuck!" Maureen yelled. "Why am I so stupid, Mark?"

All her false composure disappeared, and Maureen felt tears crawling form her eyes. "I don't even know why I didn't get back together with her!"

Shaken, Mark took cautious steps towards the diva and put his arms around her. Maureen sniffed and rested her head on his shoulder, folding awkwardly into his embrace and instinctively expecting to feel the curves of Joanne's breasts and hips fitting into her own. Instead, she was greeted with Mark's angular form, and his earnest sympathy that, while a perfect crutch for Maureen's confusion at that moment, wasn't quite love, and wasn't Joanne.

…

Joanne had wasted the entire night thinking about going to see Maureen, and had only got to the loft early that morning. She hadn't realised exactly how many hours she'd wasted, however, and she was confused and disoriented by the time she got back to her apartment. The certainty she'd felt in the loft that Maureen would come back to her lessened by the second when she wasn't actually faced with her girlfriend's soft eyes, so at odds with the rest of her belligerent face.

Joanne sat at the table next to her mound of untouched paperwork, and closed her eyes, taking several deeps breaths before checking the clock. It was too late to take the subway to work, and she couldn't face the amount of social interaction it would take to hire a taxi. Besides which, she couldn't continue on her case until she'd worked through the piles of pages that sat at her elbow, mocking her lack of motivation.

Sighing, Joanne reached for the phone and did something she'd never done before: she called her assistant and, through a hastily adopted nasal voice and weak cough, convinced the woman to cancel all her meetings because she was sick and wouldn't be coming in today. Joanne could tell the woman didn't believe her; she didn't believe herself. But her assistant was not paid to judge the authenticity of Joanne's sick days. She was paid to make sure they didn't matter.

Joanne hung up the phone and stared at the first page of report. The words swam before her eyes, and it was only when she reached up to rub them that she realised they were swimming in not tiredness but tears.


	3. Work

_A/N: I had a little trouble with this chapter, but here it is... the action should pick up soon! Thanks to everyone who's been reading!_

_..._

The phone rang.

Joanne jerked awake, carefully unsticking her face from the table. She looked around, groggy, and checked her watch. It was almost five o'clock.

"Shit," Joanne muttered. She'd been sleeping for almost five hours. Honestly, one fight with her girlfriend and her sleep schedule went out the window.

The phone rang again, and Joanne snatched it up, her sleep-soaked voice barely functioning as she croaked, "Joanne Jefferson."

"God, finally!" Her blonde, peppy assistant's voice pierced Joanne's eardrums and made her wince. "I've only been trying to reach you since three hours ago. Where have you been?"

Joanne sighed. "I was… I was working. I took the phone off the hook so I wouldn't be disturbed."

"Of course you did, sweetie," her assistant replied smoothly. "Listen, we've had a complication with the Jones case. Apparently, Mr. Jones hired a private investigator to-"

"Look, Annalise," Joanne interrupted, through gritted teeth. She appreciated everything her assistant did for her, she really did, but sometimes her constant perkiness just grated. "That's… great, really, but…"

Annalise tried to protest that no, it wasn't great, but Joanne continued firmly, "But I think this pharmaceuticals case is more important, and I'd really like to get this pile of work on it done. Okay?"

"Okay," Annalise conceded unhappily. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Bye," Joanne smiled halfheartedly, and returned her eyes to the papers in front of her. She had read through three of them before she realized that she wasn't taking in a single word. Sighing, she tried again, with the same result.

Joanne got up from the table and headed for the freezer, hoping to find some kind of frozen sustenance. She was greeted with only the flickering, almost-dead bulb and a packet of Maureen's fish fingers. It was only when she'd checked the expiry date on the packet, almost hurled, and picked it up between two fingers to throw it in the trash, that she realized that she and Maureen had been intending to do the weekly shopping together – including buying ice cream – as a celebration of their third month living together. Joanne stood by the freezer, unaware of the cold air blowing in her face, and tried not to think about her girlfriend.

And was she even her girlfriend anymore? Joanne sighed and slammed the freezer door, sliding to the floor and leaning against the cool, smooth surface. Maureen had needed space. _Some fucking space_, as her note had said. So she was living the bohemian life in her ex's loft, having fun, waking up at two to go shopping, while Joanne was stuck in her lonely, empty apartment, sleeping at her table. The only human contact she'd had since she left the loft - however many hours ago – had been a brief, barely coherent conversation with her assistant. Just who had gotten the better deal here?

Joanne's resolve eddied and swelled. One minute she was full of determination to go and find Maureen and drag her home, and the next she was… she was slumped on the kitchen floor by the freezer, fantasizing about supermarkets. After what seemed like an eternity of indecisive hovering, she stood up. She couldn't stay here and keep thinking, not when every possible avenue led to Maureen.

Decisively, she grabbed the phone and dialled her office. It took Annalise five rings to pick up, and when she did Joanne cut off her usual receptionist spiel. "Annalise, it's Joanne."

"Well, hey," the blonde replied, and Joanne could tell she had been surprised into informality. She quickly amended, "I mean, hello."

"Listen, I can't concentrate on this case," Joanne confessed. Perhaps it was Annalise's unintended openness that triggered Joanne into being more frank than she'd intended, or maybe in the absence of Maureen, Joanne was forced to make all the tactless comments herself. "I'm having… I had a small personal crisis, and I need something to take my mind off it."

Then she rushed out, before her sanity cold return and snatch the words from her mouth, "Do you wanna come out for a drink with me?"

"N-now?" Annalise stuttered, even more caught off guard by Joanne's impulsiveness than the lawyer herself. "I don't get off until five, and we both know that Mr. Big Boss would kill us both if I cut out early. Your unexplained absence is gonna be hard enough to-"

"Annalise," Joanne interrupted. "When you finish work, meet me outside the building and we'll go out for a while. You sound like oyu need loosening up as much as I do."

"Okay," Annalise chirped, all uncertainty miraculously erased from her voice. "I'll see you at five."

"See you then," Joanne confirmed, and hung up.

She stared at the phone for a moment, hardly believing what she'd just done. The lawyer had never been one to shrink from reality, however, and that reality soon became perfectly clear.

_I just asked my assistant on a date._


	4. Drink

The ceiling had five cracks in it, was home to six spiders and nineteen webs, and was approximately the colour of an overworn white T-shirt. It was one of the most boring ceilings Maureen had ever stared at, but in the absence of anyone to entertain her, it was the only source of excitement she had left.

_And how lame is that?_ she asked herself, sighing and getting up from where she'd been lying on the loft's couch. She had the whole day to herself, for once; she was free from rehearsals, protests, and fancy business dinners with Joanne, and she hadn't even arranged to meet anyone at the Life. The day was completely Maureen's own… and she was bored out of her mind.

She checked the clock. She'd made it to five, somehow, although napping for three hours that afternoon had certainly killed some time. After her awkward conversation with Joanne and her even more awkward hug with Mark that morning, she'd been quite happy to shun human contact for a while as Roger left to take Mimi out for lunch, and Mark bicycled around Central Park filming bums, or whatever it was he did. Maureen didn't actually know what Mark was doing these days, and she didn't really care, either. He seemed happy enough, and while she'd never admit it, that was enough to keep Maureen happy too.

Mark returned a few minutes after Maureen gave up her fascinating interlude with the ceiling, dragging his bike into the corner and slipping his camera off his neck. He unwound his scarf carefully, almost reverentially, Maureen noted, amused, and folded it on the kitchen counter.

"Hey, Maureen," he greeted the diva. "How's the ceiling?"

"How should I know?" she replied defensively. She was disconcerted. How was it that she had given up trying to know Mark, yet even after almost two years of separation, the filmmaker still had her pegged? He seemed to know instinctively what she'd do and what she needed, and while it was flattering, it was also slightly worrying.

"I haven't looked at your ceiling since the last time we had sex," Maureen rallied, but a smile ghosted across her lips.

"As I recall, you didn't spend much time on your back," Mark smiled, his voice soft. He had certainly grown since they broke up. Maureen clearly remembered a time when Mark was too embarrassed to even mention anything to do with sex; in high school, his face had used to glow red every time someone said the word "condom". Even in health class.

"Hey, I wore the pants. What can I say?" Maureen giggled. She walked over to the counter and leaned on it as she watched Mark pour himself a glass of milk. A brief though flashed through her mind, along the lines of, _He still drinks milk? That's so cute!_

Maureen blinked, surprised. It had been a long time since the diva had applied the term "cute" to anyone apart from Joanne – well, there had been that one girl, in the bar that time, but whatever. That hardly counted.

"You want one?" Mark asked, misinterpreting her gaze at his glass.

Maureen shook her head, and reached for the phone. "I prefer something a little stronger. Let's get Collins over here and have a few rounds of magic Stoli. For old times' sake, you know? You, me, Roger and Collins, sans partners?"

Mark smiled and swallowed a mouthful of milk, impressively getting none on his face. "I'd like that."

"Great!" Maureen chirped, and walked across the loft to a spot she knew was roughly above Mimi's bedroom on the floor below. As she waited for Collins to pick up his phone, she knelt and banged on the floor, yelling as she did so, "Hey, Roger! Put some clothes on and let your girlfriend get to work!"

She was sure she heard a faint groan of consent, just before Collins' answering machine clicked on. Angel's voice played through the receiver, and Maureen jolted upright. It had been a long time since she'd heard the drummer anywhere other than in her own head.

"Hey, honey, me and Professor Collins are totally having wild sex right now. Leave a message. _Gracias_."

Maureen smiled. She remembered Mark being concerned that prospective employers might call Collins and be put off by that message. Collins had been so in love with Angel, and so happily apathetic because of it, that he had kept the message, a proud badge of his identity, declaring that if employers didn't like it, he didn't want to be employed by them anyway. After Angel's death, however, the teacher had been apathetic for quite the opposite reason, and Maureen suspected he kept the message just so he could still hear Angel's voice.

"Hey, Collins," she grinned into the phone, determined to put some happiness back into her best friend's life, "I know you're there, moping. Get your ass and your Stoli to the loft. We're all getting hammered. Okay?"

Satisfied, she hung up and waited for the boys to arrive.

…

Joanne waited nervously outside her office building. The nerves were only partly due to what she was about to do – going out to a bar with her assistant wasn't exactly typical behaviour for the lawyer. Mostly, Joanne was nervous because she had not yet missed a day of work this year, especially not over something as trivial as a row with her girlfriend. If her boss caught her outside and fully healthy, she would be in deep shit.

Annalise emerged from the revolving doors at six minutes past five, huddled in a long, black coat to ward off the evening chill. She looked demure and businesslike, but at the same time she was confident and sexy. Maureen had never been able to pull that look off.

As soon as this thought entered Joanne's brain, she berated herself; everything about it was wrong, from the past tense to the comparison to the fact that she was even admitting Annalise's sexiness at all. Joanne still considered herself attached, even if Maureen almost definitely didn't. This was just a gesture of friendship between work colleagues. There was nothing -

"Hello in there?"

Joanne was snapped out of her reverie by Annalise waving a hand in front of her face.

"Sorry," she smiled, slightly flustered. "How was work?"

Annalise sighed and fell into step with Joanne as the lawyer headed towards a nearby bar. "Terrible," she said, and Joanne smiled at the drama of her statement.

"You would not believe the number of people who called for you today," Annalise exclaimed. "Seriously. Both parties from the pharmaceuticals case, Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones' private investigator, some new client… it was madness. And on the one day you happen to be mysteriously absent from the office? I started telling people you'd been struck down with chicken pox."

Joanne laughed. "I'll be back tomorrow, I promise. Provided you don't get me drunk, or anything."

Something flickered across Annalise's face, something Joanne couldn't quite decipher, something she wasn't even sure was there, and then the blonde woman laughed back. "I don't think so, Joanne."

"Here we are," Joanne announced, and held open the door of a small, cosy corner building open for Annalise. The bar was called The Doctor's Rooms, and its atmosphere was almost that of an English pub. It was small and friendly, decorated in rich reds and browns with several private booths in the back corner. Various medical memorabilia adorned the walls, all tastefully arranged, of course. The bar was a haven for students and young professionals – but only those who were serious about their work. The Doctor's Rooms carried a certain academic air, an air which was shared by its patrons.

Joanne slid into a seat at the bar and patted the one next to her. Annalise settled there, and smiled.

"This is wonderful. How come I've never been here before?"

Joanne shrugged. "I think the name puts most people off."

"I guess," Annalise agreed, and shrugged out of her coat with a delicate twist of her shoulders. She had a low cut blouse underneath it, and the neckline tapered towards her cleavage in an artfully deceptive V. The shirt, while seemingly conservative, hugged the blonde's figure closely, and was incredibly sexy.

Flustered, Joanne looked away, and said, too loudly, "So, you want a drink?"

Annalise cut right through any hint of awkwardness with a bright smile. "Something in a margarita," she requested. "Not too strong, though. We can work our way up to those."

Joanne forced herself to believe that it was just a trick of the light that made it appear that Annalise had winked at her.


	5. Drunk

_A/N: In between posting the last chapter and this one, I realised that there's a blonde, ditsy character on _Doctor Who_ also called Annalise. No similarity is intended. :P_

...

Collins arrived only a few minutes after Roger, pouncing on Maureen and smothering her in a gigantic bear hug. "Girl, it is good to see your face! I feel like we never talk anymore!"

Maureen laughed, hugging him back. "Nice to see you too, professor."

Roger ruffled Mark's hair. "Where's Marky's hug?"

"Oh, does Marky want a hug?" Maureen pouted, letting go of Collins. She puckered her lips and leapt towards the filmmaker, who batted her away, sending her into Roger's lap, where she lay giggling.

As Maureen watched Collins pour out what was sure to be the first of many glasses of alcohol, it suddenly struck her just how rarely she'd gotten together with her best friends recently. It seemed that as they got older, more and more reasons to stay apart presented themselves. Mark was always filming or looking for jobs, Roger was always spending whatever precious time he could with Mimi, and since Angel, Collins' passion for teaching had returned and he'd spent almost every waking moment at NYU, chatting to bright students or marking papers, or just sitting in his office because it was too painful to go home.

The diva thankfully gulped a mouthful of Stoli when Collins presented her with a glass. The bitter liquid slid down her throat easily, and chased all those pesky, mature thoughts into a far corner of her brain. With even a small amount of alcohol inside her, it was easier for Maureen to laugh, to talk, to find a comfortable position for her head in Roger's lap, and even to stop, for the smallest second, that dull ache in the pit of her stomach that was constantly reminding her to miss Joanne.

…

Joanne watched, fascinated, as Annalise tipped her head back and laughed at something the lawyer had said. When Annalise turned back to her, Joanne sipped her glass of white wine and pretended she hadn't been looking. Annalise was oblivious to what was going on in front of her, and ordered another drink.

The pair had been playing out this routine ever since they had entered the bar some two hours ago. Joanne was beginning to realise that she was attracted to Annalise, whatever that might mean. She loved the other woman's smile, her colour-coordination skills, her sense of humour. She could imagine what Annalise would look like naked, but every time she did she buried her face and her thoughts in her glass until the image vanished. The inevitable comparisons with Maureen kept on coming, and each time Joanne pushed them away. Annalise was not Maureen, never would be Maureen… she wasn't even gay, Joanne reminded herself forcefully as Annalise ordered the lawyer another glass of wine, smiling at her over the top of her glass, from behind a paper umbrella.

Joanne checked her watch for what seemed like the billionth time. It was half past seven; she couldn't reasonably claim that she needed to get home to bed, and there was no other pressing engagement she could invent that would whisk her away from the bar. Joanne sighed, then disguised her sigh as a cough as Annalise threw a concerned glance in her direction. Joanne smiled at her, thin-lipped, and desperately tried to think of an excuse to leave before either her own insane attraction to her assistant or her thoughts of Maureen made her do something stupid.

She jumped when she felt Annalise's manicured hand covering her own. "Listen, Joanne," the blonde said softly. "If you want to leave, I totally understand. Whatever that 'personal crisis' was that made you ask me out tonight, I can see it's getting to you. I won't feel rejected…" She paused, drained the dregs of her drink, and shrugged. "Well, okay, I will, but that's not your problem. But seriously, go home if you want. I won't hold it against you."

Joanne blinked, trying hard to stop all her blood rushing to the single point where Annalise's warm palm lay across the back of her hand. "That's… nice of you," she managed. "I'm actually feeling a little…"

Annalise removed her hand to play with her straw nervously. "Don't make excuses," she smiled. "I know you don't want to be here, for whatever reason, okay? That's good enough for me. Go home."

Joanne managed another smile, and gathered her bag and coat. "I'll see you tomorrow," she said. "And… thank you for this. I had a really good time."

So saying, she fled before she could do something really stupid, like satisfy her urge to lean forwards and kiss Annalise.

…

The loft looked funny through Maureen's haze of Stoli. So she giggled at it, incessantly. She was having trouble remembering how many glasses she'd drunk, or how many people there were in the room, or what she was even doing there. In her drunken brain, this last notion struck her as the most important, so she searched her foggy memory for reason.

"I… slept here," she told no-one in particular, trying to recall why she'd done such a thing.

"Really?" Collins had either drunk less, or had more of a resistance to, the alcohol that was so impending Maureen's reasoning. "Did you and Joanne have another fight?"

"Oh, Joanne!" Maureen cried, a huge smile spreading over her face. "I _love_ Joanne! She's my favourite!" She laughed, slapping Roger's leg. "Don't you like Joanne?"

Roger nodded, and downed another shot. "Oh, yeah. Joanne. She's… I like her. Good ass."

Maureen sat up, a shocked giggle bursting from her mouth. "Hey, that's my… my…" She paused, and looked at Collins, who in her confused mind had transformed into a pillar of common sense. "What is she? I mean, did we have a fight? Is she still my Pookie?"

"I still maintain that I was the original Pookie," Mark interrupted, and Roger hit him upside the head.

"Shh," the guitarist whispered. "This could be important."

Collins shrugged. "I don't know, Maureen," he murmured. Over the many years of their friendship, the professor had learnt to treat the drunken diva with care; she was likely to switch from hysterically happy to hysterically upset within the space of a sentence.

Maureen looked at him like he was crazy. "No, seriously, I can't remember," she said, and her giggle was cut off as she made a thoughtful face – or at least what passed for a thoughtful face in her inebriated state. "We fought, and then… I don't know." She shrugged.

Collins, concerned, took a seat next to his childhood friend, and put a gentle hand on her leg. "You guys fought again?"

Maureen jerked away from him in disgust. "I'm not talking to you about it," she scoffed. "Jesus Christ, I'm not that drunk." And so saying, she got up, misjudged the distance to the table and fell in a disgruntled heap on the floor.


	6. Call

_A/N: Apologies for the slow update... I've had a busy month or so what with Christmas and work. For those of you who are still keen to stick with this after this chapter (heh...), progress should hopefully be a little quicker now, with the addition of Chuck to my life. Chuck's a laptop, and he's willing and able to churn out some more fic for you lovely people! :D_

...

Joanne had dialled all but one of the digits in the loft's phone number before she changed her mind and put the phone down.

_So much for making up my mind,_ she scolded herself. She had hoped – even though she may not have admitted it to herself at the time – that taking Annalise out would erase any thoughts of Maureen from her mind, at least long enough to finish her work on the pharmaceuticals case. But her cunning plan, while scoring her a delightful evening with someone she'd never expected to enjoy an evening out with, had come to no avail. Every thought that ran through Joanne's head was still about Maureen, except for the occasional thought of Annalise, which Joanne felt so guilty and confused about that she returned to thinking about Maureen simply because it was safer.

Joanne was not usually this indecisive. She knew what she wanted and how to get it, and she did not run from the new or the different. And yet, she thought, a new feeling of disgust rising within her, here she was running from new and unfamiliar feelings, and taking almost two days to make a decision that would normally have taken a few hours at the most.

The lawyer took a deep breath, and made the dreaded comparison between Annalise and Maureen. She didn't know whether she'd wanted to see it or not, but there was a clear winner. There had always been a clear winner.

Joanne dialled the loft.

…

Maureen had fallen asleep after her fourth shot, which was unusual for her, but nevertheless probably a safer course of action than her usual trick of using the vodka as a springboard for various other types of alcohol, staying up until well into the next morning, sleeping all day and waking in the early evening with a totally ruined sleep pattern and an even uglier hangover.

The phone ringing didn't help Maureen's hangover this time, and the fact that she was awake made her too annoyed to reflect that at least her body clock was still in sync.

"SPEEEAK."

"Hey, guys. Maureen. Um… God, listen, baby, I was stupid and I'm sorry. Call me ba-"

Maureen snatched up the phone, furious. "Just tell everyone about our problems, why don't you?" she hissed.

"Wh- honeybear," Joanne stammered, sounding disoriented. "Since you're sleeping there, I presume they've already worked out something's up."

Maureen sighed. "Whatever."

"Listen," the lawyer murmured. "I was an idiot. I never should have blown up at you like that, and I respect that you needed space, but I miss you, and-"

"And what about me?" Maureen interrupted. Her head was pounding; all she wanted was a strong, hot black coffee and some really greasy food, and Joanne trying to have a serious relationship talk was none of those things, least of all hot. "I still need… whatever the fuck it was I said I needed," she continued, "And I don't need you crawling around making excuses, trying to get me to come trotting back like one of those dogs you leave at the Grand Canyon."

"Maureen, you're being unreasonable," Joanne snapped.

"I _am _fucking unreasonable!" the diva yelled. "I'm unreasonable and irrational and I'm selfish, and if you can't handle that you never should have fucked me in the first place."

So saying, and knowing she wouldn't be able to fit the handset back in its cradle, Maureen slammed her hand down on the phone and disconnected the call, dropped the receiver and stumbled back to the couch, putting a pillow on her head before slipping back into the merciful oblivion of sleep.

…

At five in the evening, as Joanne was three seconds away from leaving the office, the phone rang. The lawyer rolled her eyes, and mouthed at Annalise through the glass wall that separated her office from the front desk. "I'm not here," she over-enunciated, making frantic slashing motions. Honestly, she had been elbow-deep in work since taking the previous day off, and Maureen's abrupt rejection that morning had done nothing to improve Joanne's mood. All she wanted to do was to go home, drink wine and maybe listen to some singer-songwriter warbling her heart out for a while. She did not have the heart, or the patience, for another phone call.

Annalise, however, simply shrugged and mouthed something Joanne couldn't make out before putting the call through to the lawyer's office. Joanne snatched up the phone and spoke in the even, polite tone of someone who is furious for no good reason.

"Joanne Jefferson."

"Oh," a too-familiar voice mumbled, "Pookie, it's me."

Joanne gritted her teeth. After Maureen had so carelessly rejected her hours ago, the lawyer had made what she'd hoped would be an unwavering decision to get over Maureen and move on. Whether or not "moving on" involved making any more plans with Annalise was up in the air. For Maureen to call _now_ was typical of the diva; she had no perception of how their last conversation could have impacted on Joanne, and chose to ignore the fact that her theatrical behaviour, while alluring, could also get boring.

"Maureen," Joanne said, eschewing use of a pet name in the hope that this might give Maureen a clue as to her feelings. "How are you?"

"I'm… I'm crap," Maureen moaned, although Joanne did detect a sheepish laugh hidden in her morose cadence. "I want you b- I mean, what I said this morning. I was so hung over, like you wouldn't believe, and I was so stupid, and I'm… I'm sorry."

Joanne blinked. This was the first time that she could remember that Maureen had offered a spontaneous apology of her own accord (her offer to kiss Joanne's shoes on New Year's Eve didn't count, the lawyer had decided, since the word "sorry" hadn't entered into it). It was touching, Joanne could not deny that. It was also sweet in a way that only Maureen could be, and in a way that Joanne sorely missed. On the point of melting, Joanne made the mistake of looking down at her desk as a smile formed on her lips.

On a huge pile of papers, a hitherto unnoticed pink Post-It sat innocuously and waited for Joanne to notice it. The lawyer cautiously unstuck the note, Maureen's name escaping her lips before she could stop it.

"Yeah?" the diva replied, and even distracted, Joanne knew that the drama queen was holding her breath. Joanne didn't reply; she stared down at the note and smiled for an entirely different reason.

The note was written in Annalise's bold, rounded hand, which was of such a confident size that it barely fit on the small fluorescent square.

_Forget all this,_ the note said. _Come for another drink. I promise not to flirt so much._

Joanne exhaled the breath she hadn't remembered to let go, and Maureen breathed out her anticipation at the same time, their twin breaths harmonising neatly and reminding Joanne suddenly, if gently, of Maureen's presence.

"Maureen," she repeated. "I have to go."

"That's it?" Maureen gasped, her voice rising in spite of her earlier quiet tears. "No 'sorry it didn't work out'? No 'it was nice while it lasted'? Just…"

Joanne sighed. "Yes. I just have to go. Okay?"

In an instant, all her previous frustration with Maureen returned with a vengeance and she snapped, "If you're so desperate to get me back in your pants, think about why I'm not there in the first place! It's your selfishness and your immaturity that got you here, so work on that before you come crawling back!"

She slammed the phone down, feeling something that was almost pride at the fact that she could be a bitch, too.

Joanne flicked the lights off in her office and walked out to Annalise's desk.

"I'll take that drink," she smiled, and this time was confident of her happiness when Annalise smiled back.


	7. Kiss

_A/N: I know it's been ages since I last updated, and I know this chapter is short, but I felt this part of Mo's plotline had to stand on its own rather than being paired with a development in Joanne's. The length should hopefully increase next chapter._

...

The third glass of wine was what made Maureen remember Joanne; the first two had been excellent at helping her forget. She wasn't a fan of drinking alone, but since Joanne was out seducing her assistant or whatever, there weren't many other options available to Maureen. She stared mournfully into the bottom of her glass, unable to remember if it was her fourth or her fifth, a fact of which she had been more than sure a moment ago. She tried to think, but gave up after a moment or two as the effort she was expending only made her want to drink more, and she was pretty sure that was a bad idea.

Maureen was staring down her wine bottle, daring it to offer her another drink, when Mark walked into the loft. He looked at Maureen for a moment, then took up a position opposite the counter from her.

"Hey," he said softly.

"Fuck," she replied, eloquently.

"Hey, if you want to drink yourself into a stupor alone, feel free," Mark shrugged. "I was just offering you some company that won't leave you with a hangover in the morning."

Maureen shrugged and pushed the bottle towards him. The last thing she felt like doing was talking.

Twenty minutes and another glass of wine later, Maureen had moved to Mark's side of the counter and was sobbing into her glass, clutching his pale had in her clammy one.

"I love her," Maureen hiccupped. "I love her, Marky, why is it so hard for me to tell her that? Why can't she just know that I really want to be with her?"

Mark caressed the back of her hand with his thumb and bravely did not mention that she was cutting off his circulation. "I don't know, Maureen, maybe… Maybe you just need to say it more often," he offered.

She looked at him like he had suggested she jump into bed with the nearest stripper. "Jesus Christ, are you stupid? She doesn't believe me! She never believes me!"

"Probably because the only time you ever actually tell her you love her is when you're trying to get into her pants," Mark suggested, more bluntly that he'd intended. As soon as the words left his mouth, he looked over at Maureen, ready to apologise, only to find her looking at him with huge eyes, her mouth slightly open in wonder.

"Mark, Marky Marcus, you are _smart_!" Maureen gasped, slapping the table with an open palm. "You are so smart," she repeated. "How did I not see that?"

Mark shrugged. Maureen grinned at him, and he smiled back at her, a little sheepishly. "I… didn't really mean that in a good way," he confessed. Something about the way she was looking at him made him nervous, like she was about to…

… to lean in close to him, whisper, "Thank you," and kiss him.

Mark closed his eyes and allowed the feeling of Maureen's lips on his, so familiar and yet after so long, so alien, to pervade him. Just this one single second was all he needed to transport himself back to happier times, back when he and Maureen were still together, when they shared the loft and Collins still smoked too much weed because most of his will to live had been sapped after he found out about the HIV, and Roger and April were still together and still doing all that heroin…

Mark snapped back to reality. Maureen's tongue was pushing up against his mouth, searching for a way in. She tasted like wine and sorrow. The strangeness of the moment won out, and Mark pulled away.

"Maureen," he said softly, watching her confused and lonely eyes flick over his face again and again. "I can't. We can't. Not again."

And he walked out of the room, leaving Maureen to her wine and sorrow, feeling strangely proud of himself.


	8. Glass

_A/N: Sorry for the long time between updates! This story is still alive, it's just progressing slowly due to real life and stuff. I hope you enjoy the chapter, anyway... :)_

...

It was a quiet night at the Doctor's Rooms, but nonetheless Joanne and Annalise were huddled at a table in the corner, tucked out of sight, so that they could feel – and act – as if they were alone. Annalise had ordered them each the most toxic-sounding cocktail she could find, and they were both now looking at their bright green glasses, giggling.

"I bet they're poisonous," Annalise grinned, not sounding overly concerned.

"It's probably going to kill us," Joanne agreed.

Annalise smiled at her, and Joanne felt her stomach turn in the delicious, almost alien way she'd previously thought only Maureen could elicit.

"Let's try it, then," she interrupted herself, before her brain could throw up any more images of the performance artist.

Annalise offered Joanne a hand, Thelma and Louise-style. Joanne laughed and took it.

"To alcohol poisoning," Annalise joked, raising her glass. Joanne wrinkled her nose, then took a mouthful of her drink, expecting it to sear her throat. She was quite surprised when it turned out to taste like a particularly sweet kiwi. Her surprise must have shown in her face, because Annalise giggled, and reached out to touch the lawyer's nose.

"You're cute when you're tipsy," she smiled, then frowned and pulled her hand away.

"What?" Joanne caught her assistant's hand as Annalise pulled away. The blonde looked at the table.

"You're my boss," she blurted. "This is so… immoral."

"What is?" Joanne said softly, unconsciously tracing circles on the underside of Annalise's wrist.

"The fact that I'm so damn attracted to you," Annalise laughed. "And that I have been ever since I started working for you. And I know you have a girlfriend, but I guess that only made me think I had more of a chance, since I knew you were interested in women- even though you were obviously with someone else, but, you know. There was a chance there…" She looked at Joanne hopelessly, half smiling. "Does this make sense?"

Joanne smiled at her, allowing herself to fully take in all the curves and lights of Annalise's face. "It does," she said softly. She was telling the truth; things suddenly did make sense. There was no thought of anyone else in Joanne's mind when she leaned forward and gently caught Annalise's lips in a kiss.

After a moment, Annalise pulled back. "Kiwi," she murmured.

"What?" Joanne replied, dazed. Kissing Annalise was strangely electrifying, like rediscovering a favourite book. Having now experienced it, Joanne began to wonder what had taken her so long.

"You taste like kiwi," Annalise explained, blushing.

"It's the…" Joanne gestured at the cocktail glasses on the table, only half registering that Annalise's was still full. "The taste, not the kiss," she clarified.

"So…" Annalise tilted her head downwards, looking at Joanne sideways. "You won't need another drink to do that again?"

Joanne smiled, and lifted Annalise's chin. "I won't."

…

The wine bottle Maureen had thrown at the wall was in pieces on the floor. This presented a problem, as to get to the phone Maureen had to walk through the broken glass. She had also decided that before she used the phone, she needed more alcohol. Both these facts made her increasingly frustrated, and she was about to send her glass the way of the bottle when the recent memory of kissing Mark bubbled up against her consciousness, and her guilt somehow managed to buoy her across the room to the phone before she realised what was happening. The diva looked down at her feet, wondering if her turbulent emotions, combined with the uncountable glasses of wine, had somehow made her immune to broken glass. Her shoes were unharmed, and Maureen blushed at her stupidity, even though no one else had witnessed it.

She gripped the receiver, her knuckles going white as she tried to suppress the image of Mark's – had it been smugness? Maureen squeezed her eyes shut and dialled Joanne's number blind. Still with her eyes closed, she held the phone to her mouth and hiccupped a sob into it.

"Joanne… Pookie, I'm so sorry. I've been so dumb… so dumb and stupid and _fucking_ immature and childish and… I'm just repeating myself. But there's- I don't repeat some stuff enough. This is so cheesy. But I love you, I really do, and I'm not just saying this to get in your pants, even though you're really hot, and I love making you… this isn't what I'm trying to say. Mark said- it doesn't matter. I love you so much, Pookie. I miss you like crazy all the time. Please… I need you back. Call… call the loft, baby…"

Maureen dropped the phone and opened her eyes, touching the cradle gently to disconnect the call. Her vision was blurry, although whether because of the alcohol or the tears she didn't know. She stumbled across to the couch and curled up on it, hugging a pillow to her chest in the vain, childish hope that it might somehow become Joanne.


End file.
